


of eiderdown

by macha



Series: Georgia on My Mind [17]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-17
Updated: 2007-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-18 11:49:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macha/pseuds/macha





	of eiderdown

###  _A03.14.02 Ad Astra Age: in the matrix, we are inside._

and the name of the tale is:

### of eiderdown

She's lying in a meadow somewhere, on her back, her arms spread wide. The sun is shining. It's so warm, she never wants to move, in case it goes away, this moment, and she can never get it back. In case it isn't real. It feels more real than real. Is that called hyperreal? Is this surrender? She opens half an eye, in or out of dream, looking for predators and portents, to see nothing but wildflowers up close under a clear blue sky.

For no particular reason, this makes her think about the color of Spike's eyes. Spike, though, is gone. And thinking about it, even in a dream, just isn't gonna bring him back. She'll only lose even the dream for good, the warmth, the sunlight, and the so very unaccustomed feeling of... safety, that's what it is, so definitely dream. Won't she? Only, shouldn't this make her sad, to know him gone, though? She checks. No sad. She just misses him. He should be here. She should go look for him. But it's so warm.

He's always here. He'll be back soon. Where did that come from? She wants to stay inside it, sunlight, sky, and meadow. And if she wakes to find that all of it is gone, will it leave her sitting alone after seven years on the cold hillside? Will she remember this? It's all she's got to get her through the day, her memories of blue and warm and light. But oh, the rules of magic are hard and fast: if she gets to keep the dream, what will she owe the maker?

The only meadows that she really knows are newish cemeteries, the kind where there aren't any tombstones. Plus those she mostly sees at night, not in the sunlight. She dreamed of standing on the beach in sunlight once, and Angel promised her he would be there forever, even if she killed him. Which she did. But then he left her anyway. That was a dream of death, his death, her death, death everywhere. If it's a Slayer dream, what is the meaning of this meadow?

Funny, she never sees Spike in dreams. But why? It's a very long time since she's seen him, lost and found in a moment down at the Hellmouth, long ago. But the intensity of that moment was so deeply felt, like this one, it's like the whole thing happened outside time. Everything crumpled up inside one moment. Why does she still feel so close to Spike, who never would have left her, but has just the same been gone so long? Why does she know so surely even inside the dream that the sky is made of the exact same blue as his heart that showed in his eyes, the sunlight warm and bright just like his soul when she knew it from the inside?

Where is this meadow, then? Since Andrew said that when he went to look, at what was left of Sunnydale, that all of it was green, wildflowers as far as the eye could see. And someday she should probably make that pilgrimage, alone, to go and look, stretch out like this in the meadow on the bed he made her that is his only grave. Warm and alive in sunlight, she will feel all that he, buried beneath the earth, still has to say to her. Embracing her, guarding her back in sunlight the way she always, honestly, by instinct trusted him to do.

But maybe when she goes there she will understand that he is really gone. At least that's what they say. Isn't that what a funeral is all about? Of course, she knows he's gone already, she was there after all. And she can even say it. If she has to. See, 'Spike is gone'. Matter of fact. Comes out smooth as butter. Nobody leaps up to argue about the truth of it either. Nevertheless, to her it still sounds completely wrong, because it really makes no sense at all.

Because somehow, and unaccountably, he is not ever gone. She doesn't need to say goodbye. He's got her heart, which doesn't feel like it needs healing, even a little bit, it's only waiting. Unreasonably she sinks a little deeper into the meadow. It's certainly surrender. She doesn't care, it's nice, and he's definitely, definitively, not gone. Alive, in every minute, still but so not-still, inside her, making safety for her, making beauty, out of love, creating a garden on his own reconsecrated ground.

She's looking at, she's lying in, she's living through another act of love, like always. Death is her gift, and life was his. Like nothing, ever, was as sure, as true as him, transparently. He never said forever but he isn't gone, he's never gone inside her. He is landscape, he is history, and he is all she's ever really gonna know about the true and secret nature of forever. Resting in his arms at last the way he always wanted, under the rugs and on the cross and on the cot in the basement, holding her just holding him, nothing at all between them. It's realer than that heaven she came back from once. And how could it always be as real as that, if he was really ever gone?

So, with the sun still shining warm, her sky still blue, the bed beneath her soft and memory still holding her in loving arms, she opens her eyes to meet whatever comes, tumbling out of the meadow down celestial stairs into the dark, and she's in...

Her old bedroom at Revello Drive? That can't be right. Must be another dream? Because that house is gone forever, everything, even the sign. He had a thing, about that sign. It was a dream. He felt so real. Is this a sign? He can't be here. Thrown out of heaven again? But she's still warm. It feels like home.

And finally it comes to her it must be xmas morning. Where did she go to bed? Long winter's nap, like in the story reading to the... kids, under the tree. Huh? So, not alone. Whole worlds to be protector of today, Buffy Emeritus, just like yesterday and yep, tomorrow too. Wishing she could just tell him she's still trying to live up to the truth he found and gave her back in the clear blue of his eyes.

There was a dream, so real, fading. It must have been just a dream. Stretched out in the arms of the earth beneath but never, now, devouring. He burned it clean, the same way he remade himself in fire, for her, a gift, a world that she could live in and he saved. The meadow beautiful and bright, so warm, and not, forever, surely gone.

*****

She's trying to ruin his happy dream. He's sleepy, could get back there yet. It's so warm inside. She keeps him better than room temperature these days. But now she's on her feet, no comfort there. She's cruel, his mistress, thrashing about, then sitting suddenly bolt upright. She wouldn't really separate him from that eiderdown. Or would she? Maybe. What is she looking for? What does she see?

He reaches out to capture her and drag her underneath again, opens an eye to see red flannel on that arm, oh yeah, she didn't stop to strip him of the top half of that Santa suit. Impulsive, in the field, his Slayer. Kids are too young, and Dawn's too cynical already, to go for the suit motif, but Buffy seemed to like his bit of holiday spirit improv there, last night. They never did get all the presents set up under the tree. Maybe they should, still it was just a couple of hours back really, cause it's still dark.

And she's still trying to get out of bed, not really quite awake yet. Slayer dreams can be a bitch, they won't let go. Something about a window now. It's like she doesn't quite understand that he's really here.

His window really, that one. Think she'll ever put up a plaque? In the old days he stood his watch in the cold outside, defending territory, till daylight came, from evil things in the night. Slayers tend to attract a lot of bottom feeders even at the best, and certainly at the worst, of times. Some of them mates, but all's fair in love, and in war too. He's never marked her but it was only prudent then and now to mark the town, let all the creepy crawlies that once included him know that anytime they thought to come for the Slayer they'd be, too right, having to go through him. Sometimes she even slept awhile inside, those long-ago nights, just knowing that he was there, and then he just plain liked to watch her breathing. Playing a bit at knights and maidens, really, with that bit of glass standing in for the sharp sword between them. Now he is her Sword for true, and he breathes right along with her, keeping her company, neither of them any longer living with any barriers between them in the dark.

But he's still taking point, so her point's well taken. Trouble can come from anywhere, especially in the night. He opens the other eye, facing the window, and it's still there, carpenter not needed yet, everything looking fine. Still dark. What is she on about? Looking at him, not sure exactly by the look just what she's looking at. That bit of nail on the frame's... not Xander issue at all, at all, but... instead pure pleasure. Hold on, then. Getting a handle on it.

Time to rush to the window, throwing it open, something something sash, he's already forgetting last night's best lines, living in the happy-ever so-after of that scenario. Heave to, and he's on his feet, tickled as hell, the Slayer changing her posture utterly the moment she sees him move, because now she's reading him just fine and trusts his responses these days, doesn't she? All's right in the world, then. Now he can finally act the proper host....

"Georgia! It has been way too long. How are the dragonlets, then? All soft and fuzzy-like? Who's feeding those little beaks this morning while you're off visiting?" Then, just in case she hasn't got a grip, "Buffy, you still remember that day. The knights, the tower, all that damn dialogue to learn? The utter absence of any brooding afterwards on the patio outside the bar, with the best cognac in the house and Georgia here to keep the flame going on top?"

And the dragon's hers all right, she's got her snout in the air, so gently, resting against the pane, accounting for the absence of any light at all, her forehead alone the size of the whole top storey. The rest of her is downstairs, all around the house, he'd wager, with the tail tucked in. Safe as houses, his whole family is, this morning. It's very good for luck, to meet with dragons. Well, at least, depending.

Meanwhile the window glass is rumbling now: purr factor's big in dragons, especially if you know just where to scratch, and Georgia's flatout shameless. And Buffy's making it up as she goes along, inventive as all get out, she always was. She's got a bit of an air, when she looks at him, seems like, of 'You gave me a dragon for xmas? Best present ever'. Got all the warmth of eiderdown, that melting look, and he plans without a flicker of conscience to milk it all day long in spite of the fact that he hasn't yet got the slightest notion why on this earth there's a dragon curled around the house on Revello Drive.


End file.
